Hipot

Have you ever wired up a piece of test equipment to a circuit or piece of equipment on your bench, only to have the dreaded magic smoke emerge when you apply power? [Steaky] did, and unfortunately for him the smoke was coming not from his circuit being tested but from a £2300 Clare H101 HiPot tester. His write-up details his search for the culprit, then looks at how the manufacturer might have protected the instrument.

[Steaky]’s employer uses the HiPot tester to check that adjacent circuits are adequately isolated from each other. A high voltage is put between the two circuits, and the leakage current between them is measured. A variety of tests are conducted on the same piece of equipment, and the task in hand was to produce a new version of a switch box with software control to swap between the different tests.

This particular instrument has a guard circuit, a pair of contacts that have to be closed before it will proceed. So the switch box incorporated a relay to close them, and wiring was made to connect to the guard socket. At first it was thought that the circuit might run at mains voltage, but when it was discovered to be only 5V the decision was made to use a 3.5mm jack on the switch box. Inadvertently this was left with its sleeve earthed, which had the effect of shorting out a DC to DC converter in the HiPot tester and releasing the smoke. Fortunately then the converter could be replaced and the machine brought back to life, but it left questions about the design of the internal circuit. What was in effect a logic level sense line was in fact connected to a low current power supply, and even the most rudimentary of protection circuitry could have saved the day.

We all stand warned to be vigilant for this kind of problem, and kudos to [Steaky] for both owning up to this particular fail and writing such a good analysis of it.

Our Fail Of The Week series has plenty to entertain the reader who is not of a nervous disposition. This isn’t the first fail to feature a suspect bit of connector wiring, not an unexpected short or even some magic smoke.

Here’s another hack that we would definitely discourage you from trying at home, 244 9 volt batteries wired in series. There’s really not much more to it than that, but [jersagfast] takes this setup through its paces arcing through air first, a LED light second, and then a CD. The air arc is probably the most impressive, but a CD doesn’t look happy after this kind of abuse either. Around 4:38, a capacitor is abused for yet more arcing.

In theory, 244 9 volt batteries in series should be nearly 2200 volts, but as measured (in sections), it “only” came out to a “measly” 2000 volts. Still plenty of voltage to be harmful or even deadly depending on the current emitted. Passing on this hack at home is strongly encouraged. On the other hand, you should watch the video after the break to see what happens. Much safer. Arcing starts around 1:44!

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